Packard Forum Index » Modification Discussion

For anybody that has installed air. What side and location did you install the compressor and do you have power steering?

Thanks
John

John:
Right, Yes

See photos.

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Ross has designed one of the simplest and probably easiest to make brackets for mounting a Sanden compressor on an inline 8. My only concern was the long unsupported belt lengths since he does use one fan belt for the compressor and PS. It has been almost 8 years since he did this first one and believe there have been others made since then. Don't recall him mentioning any issues with belt whipping so if that is the case there would be no need to figure out an extra pulley to drive the compressor. If interested in this approach you might contact him and see if there are updates or anything he has done differently.
packardinfo.com/xoops/html/modules/newbb ... .php?post_id=133069#forumpost133069

Thanks for the responses. Very helpful.
John

Has anyone come up with a bracket and pulley that uses a shorter belt or pair of belts more like the original factory air? Also, do the Sanden compressors use the same fitting size that the factory A/C used?

I have just acquired a 1948 Custom and will, within the next year, install A/C.
I would appreciate any plans that you have on the installation process.
Do you have an electric fan, and did you update the radiator, while using the original frame?

Thank you for your time..........Marc

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The photos above by DavidPackard are some of the few I have seen of a 22-23 series car. His engine is the later 288/327 block used thru 54 though. If your engine is stock it should be the older 356 which ended production with the 50 models so you are going to be entirely on your own as far as the compressor bracket and drive belts. You could go with something like he used or try the link in post #3 pointing to the bracket Ross came up with. His is probably one of the better, simpler, and easiest to make brackets out there for aftermarket AC.

I believe Packard may have changed fan belt size on the 22 and 23 series Customs with 356 engines and if it is 3/4 or less you could probably get a longer belt and find the appropriate size compressor pulley to do as Ross does with the single belt driving everything. If the belt is still the extra wide -- almost 1" -- as was used on the earlier 356 engines that will be an issue in finding a large enough groove on the compressor pulley. Prewar Packards with AC drove the compressors off a second groove on the fan pulley and that might be an option in driving a compressor that needs a narrower belt. AFAIK, the few dual groove AC pulleys reproduced in the 70s or 80s are most likely NLA but you might be able to find one or have something custom made. Some with the later blocks have used a power steering pulley on the vibration damper to drive a compressor. I am not sure one of those could be added to the 356 vibration damper and Packard didn't provide anything postwar until 53.

Electrical on 6v cars is going to be another issue. I don't know what DavidPackard did on his car but getting his thoughts would be at the top of the list of people to get in touch with. While it has been found the Sanden compressor clutch will pull in at about 7v and has been used by several people satisfactorily on 6v cars, there are no inside units made for 6v that I am aware of. You will probably need to either find an old unit off ebay or the junkyard or else modifiy something.

Cooling could well be an issue. The 22 and 23 series models are not known for having robust cooling systems to start with. At the least I believe you will probably need to think about going thru the engine and cooling system to make sure it is clean and otherwise in excellent condition and also think about having the radiator recored which will be a significant expense. Packard did add an extra thick core on AC cars and also installed what they called heavy duty fans. In some cases that was an extra blade and in others, a larger diameter. The 356 engine had a 5 blade fan instead of the standard 4 blade which gave it a slight advantage but you might need to think about something modern such as a flex fan if you want more than 5 blades. Doing that will require some fabrication because of the larger diameter fan hub used on that engine and fan. I don't believe any commercial adapters will fit. Some have added a push fan in front of the radiator just for normal cooling needs so I can't speak to how effective it would be with an extra load of added AC.

Here is the fan pulley used on the 40-42 356 engines with AC.

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Howard my ’48 is not equipped with the AC . . . it’s the ’54 Cavalier.

Joe Wareham ‘Joe’s ’49 Club Sedan’ project blog covered installation of a Sanden compressor starting on page 13. Joe and I exchanged several messages on what we thought was a competitive method to mount any such device. Two issues can be resolved by a two piece bracket design, where one bracket is rigidly mounted to the engine. This bracket will have slots (not holes) that a Sanden compressor bracket mounts to. The slots allows for alignment of the drive belt to the existing Packard pulley. This adjustment would be typically done once, and there would be nothing wrong if an attempt was made to fabricate this bracket with holes alone, as Joe shows in post #170. The Sanden bracket will have slots that will allow for belt tension adjustment, although some Sanden brackets allow the compressor to pivot to tighten the belt.

Back to my ’54, again it’s a 6+ car. I’ve looked for something that might boost/convert the voltage to power the AC . . . I couldn’t find anything, so I’ve concluded; 1.) The converter is inside the evaporator unit under the dash, or 2.) The unit is truly a 6 volt device. I’ve never determined whether the Sanden clutch has been changed or that clutch is intended for 12 volt. As luck would have it I just ordered a Sanden replacement for my ’99 Suburban, so I can compare the resistance of the two clutches and report those values. I have not noticed a problem with the engine coolant temperature on that car, but I do agree with HH56’s observation on the cooling margin available on the ’48-’50 cars.

As the photos show my compressor is mounted on the right side of the engine. It was installed prior to my ownership, and although I tried I have not figured-out who installed same. With power steering and an oil filter real-estate on the left side of the engine is at a premium.

dp

I am embarrassed to say I got fixated on 22-23 series and was not looking at things closely enough to see the car was not a 22-23 series. Fan blower, battery, PS, long tail on the air cleaner staring me in the face and I ignored them all. A declining and one track mind must be another sign of old age to go along with the bad knees and eyes.

I don't have any other photos of 22-23 cars. I know Joe has his car running on 12v so that part he might not help on. Other than that, Joe should be able to come up with some bracket suggestions. I did the two piece on my 47 but not really a fair comparison because my bracket is bolts and not welds. I tried to position the compressor like Packard did the prewar Clippers so mine is on the left and I did some funny stuff to keep the oil filter and horizontal vent tube.

I am concerned about how anyone with a 356 will do the drive belt . O_D confirmed the 22-23 series 356 does still have the wide fan belt so that is going to be an issue if a PS pulley cannot be mounted on the older 356 dampers. I believe the widest compressor groove available will be around 3/4 inch. One I bought for the 47 is part of Sanden's FLX7 series and made for heavy trucks. That one is 3/4 and I believe there was a similar size used in some the older flat head Ford engines with the dual water pumps so maybe those are available at OldAir or Vintage. I was lucky in that I bought the repro fan pulley for another car way back when and never used it so had it on the shelf.

The only 6 to 12v converters I know of capable of the current required for AC are large units so am sure you would know if one was present. They also need to be spec'd for motor and coil operation because the spike and heavy inductive load generated by motors starting and stopping can destroy a converter if it does not have added protection built in. If your AC has a fan or single blower wheel it is possible someone changed to a universal 6v heater motor. I don't know of any 6v motors with dual shafts made that would work with the typical 2 wheel modern under dash unit..

Marc Williams

I finally had a chance to measure the coil resistance on the A/C compressor on my ’54 Cavalier. What I found was 3.6 ohms, which is exactly the same as the coil in a replacement compressor I just bought for my ’99 Suburban.

I also went on the fruitless task of searching the web for an A/C clutch designed for 6 volts, meaning one half of the resistance to hold the same current. Just like many before me I failed miserably, however I did find that coils come in ‘one-wire’ and ‘two-wire’ configurations. All are actually ‘two-wire’, and it’s just a distinction on whether the ‘ground’ wire is external or terminated on the case of the compressor. I also found a few sites that mentioned a 12 volt coil will work on a 6 volt car, but speculated that there might be cases where the clutch did not function properly at 6 volts. There was a discussion that at the normal system voltage of about 7 volts the success rate would be better.

There was also a discussion about shimming the solenoid air gap to the minimum allowable. The specification for air gap for a Sanden compressors is typically 0.016 to 0.031 inch, but that value varies with air compressor manufacturer and compressor model. The air gap on my Sanden equipped ’54 Cavalier is 0.025 inch, so there is a bit of margin I could take advantage of if my compressor had problems with ‘pull-in’.

My take a ways are:
1. The resistance of a modern air conditioner clutch coil is approximately 3.6 ohms, and at that resistance success on 6 volts is not guaranteed, but is highly likely.
2. Modern air conditioner compressors are available in either a ‘one-wire’ or ‘two-wire’ clutch configurations, and the installation should provide a clutch coil ground path that has the least practical resistance.
3. Reducing the clutch air gap to the specification minimum would help, but that adjustment may not be required on all compressor clutches that will be operated at 6 volts.

dp